Part 3

A short bird walk onto my Cal-PASS groups - where it all began!

It continues to be a happy surprise to me when I bring inter-segmental faculty together - no matter the reason. When I was heading up the Regional Cal-PASS effort in Sonoma and Marin, we gathered to analyze student transition data: where are our students succeeding and where are they failing when they transition from high school to college? The data was revealing at times, but must of those in the room knew, without looking at data, where students needed help. What concerned us most was the huge number of students who had to take remedial (basic skills) English and math classes in high ed upon graduating with fairly decent grades from high school. We pinpointed where we thought were the biggest disconnects and went to work on solutions.

The goals of these Cal-PASS groups were fairly open-ended. We were gathering in same-subject groups once per month to talk about expectations, pedagogy, broader issues of education and what the data was telling us. We put or heads together to come up with many, many interventions, both for students and faculty. We created a "Jump Start to Math" course that helped an identified group of high school seniors test out of basic skills math courses, we coordinated a "Science A-Go-Go" field experience for high school students to increase their interest in science. (This was an especially exciting initiative because it involved SSU professors, lab experiments, site digs and a visit to the tide pools of Bodega Bay).  After participating in several different types of essay paper norming sessions and other good work, the English group started a campaign along the lines of the poster below.

In the fifth year of these intersegmental meetings, we got to a point in all the groups that we felt like we had to widen our circle of faculty involved in intersegmental discussions. We organized several very successful campaigns involving a poster that (we hope) is hanging in every single high school classroom in Sonoma and Marin. We also began our two years of "un-conferences," 2 per year for STEM and two per year for English. More about the un-conferences in my next post!

Part Two

This SLATE project was one that began simple enough: focus on creating either a math or English lesson plan that integrates CTE. We were to use our already established Professional Learning Councils (made up of same-subject faculty from high school, community colleges and universities) and recruit a CTE faculty person from the community college. The type of CTE person was dependent upon the theme of the lesson. I had three faculty groups at the time: English, math and science. We had already decided that math and science would work together as a STEM group so we could keep our groups in tact.

Then things became more complicated. For the better, for sure, but harder to conceive of and move forward with. The project lead wanted us to use a certain lesson planning template modeled after Understanding by Design lesson planning (which is by far the best thing going in curriculum development these days!). For those not familiar with UBD, lessons are planned backward. The gist is What do we want our students to come away knowing? And how are we going to know they got it?

So now the parameters of the project grew. We had to create lessons plans that integrated CTE (of course this meant crosswalking all the Common Core Standards, CTE standards and student learning outcomes at community colleges), and use the UBD model, which we all had to be trained in. All of this sounded bulky enough, but because this faculty group is an overachieving bunch, we made it even more complicated for ourselves, though we didn't know it at the time....

We decided to create a pure linked learning experience by choosing one essential question for all of our content groups. How cool would this be? We would create all of our lessons with one common theme. One thread that would make the leaning experience so comprehensive and so very meaningful to students. It took no less than three meeting periods to agree on the perfect essential question: How is the health of our planet and the health of an individual interrelated? I will go into how we accomplished our task in the next post, but want to reiterate how this project turned out to be the BEST professional development I have ever been involved with. And I was the fearless leader! Gulp!

High School and Higher Ed Faculty Working Together

Part 1

I am mourning the end of probably the best educational project I have been involved with. It's called SLATE - the Strategic Linking of Academics and Technical Education - and it has been funded for three years by the Irvine Foundation, and overseen by The Institute for Evidence-Based Change.

What we're doing is cutting edge in so many ways. We started with three groups of content area faculty from regional high schools, community colleges and universities. (We had been meeting as inter-segmental faculty Professional Learning Councils for about 5 years before getting the SLATE project handed to us by Irvine). Irvine is getting more and more involved with Linked Learning, and was intrigued by the fact that IEBC had inter-segmental groups already in place to dig their hands into this project. 

The assignment was to create lesson plans that combined a core content area with a CTE program offered at community colleges. The goal with this project, as with all linked learning projects, was to increase student engagement in learning by being able to apply what students are learning to real-work activities, and make it relevant. The question of "when will I ever use this in real life?" might be addressed with this type of thoughtful planning. To do this project, we had to recruit a few CTE faculty from the community college and gather their input on expectations, assignments and CTE standards. 

IEBC took this project one step further by training SLATE faculty in Understanding by Design lesson planning methods (my Wiggins and McTighe books are absolutely thrashed!) . Each lesson was to start with an essential question that shaped the entire lesson. This question is at the forefront of each lesson, each activity and each class discussion. In fact, we recommend this essential question get posted on butcher paper and hung in the classroom throughout the lesson.  

I will go into detail on our approach to this project, but first I must get through this mourning period. I have two more sessions left with my Contra Costa math, science, English and CTE teachers. Just two. Our work will be published in a guide for faculty, districts and, perhaps, policy makers. But the end product, this guide, is not where the meat is. Several other factors came into play that made this the best professional development I have ever been involved with. First, it was an intense and oftentimes frustrating learning-by- doing project. Second, it involved same-content teachers from both high school and higher education (which aded to alignment of expectations and deep discussions about teaching and learning). And third, it was a long-term project that created a tight sense of community among teachers. More to come.